Jonah 3-4 “Repentance” July 15, 2007 1. The Word of the LORD Brings Repentance (3:1-10) a. Jonah Repents (3:1-5) In chapter 1:1 the word of the LORD came to Jonah. And unlike every other prophet in the whole of scripture, Jonah disobeyed. In 3:1 we hear, Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Ninevah, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you. This time, Jonah arose and went to Ninevah, according to the word of the LORD. Jonah repents and does what God says. But as we will see, Jonah’s obedience is not yet from the heart. God has compelled him to obey, but he is not really happy about it! We are also told something about Ninevah: Now Ninevah was an exceedingly great city... Literally, this read, “Ninevah was a large city to God” (Elohim—which is plural and may be either a reference to “God” or to “the gods” of the nations). While this could mean simply “even the gods thought it was large,” that would seem to be out of place in the book of Jonah. More likely it reminds Jonah’s readers that even Ninevah is under God. Also we are told that Ninevah was three days’ journey in breadth. This is a literal translation, but probably not very accurate. A “three days’ journey is a phrase that means “a long ways away” whereas the phrase “one day’s journey” means “a short ways.” So the point is that Ninevah is a long ways away from Israel – it took Jonah a long time to get there. But then once he got there – he went a short way into the city and started proclaiming his message: Yet forty days, and Ninevah shall be overthrown! This is the shortest prophetic denunciation in the Bible. It is only five words in Hebrew. Od arbaim yom vninveh nehpaket. The word for “overthrown” is a word used to refer to what God did to Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19 and Deuteronomy 29. And then the strangest thing happens. When the Word of the LORD came to Yahweh’s prophet, he fled from the LORD; but when the Word of the LORD comes to the Assyrians, the people of Ninevah believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them. b. Ninevah Repents (3:6-9) In an astounding display of penitence, the people of Ninevah demonstrate faith and repentance before the God of Israel. Many have speculated on the reasons for this. Some have noted that Assyria seems to have experienced a considerable downturn in their fortunes at some point, and so perhaps the Assyrians were in a moment of self-doubt and ready to believe that perhaps their misfortunes were due to some foreign deity. It seems as though people in the ancient world knew quite a bit about the religious beliefs and practices of their neighbors. So when an Israelite prophet shows up and says that their city will be overthrown in 40 days, perhaps the Ninevites remembered what had happened to Sodom and Gomorrah. And since their own deities appeared weak, they may have feared the God of Israel for a brief time. There is no record of any extended religious change in the Assyrian records, so it is unlikely that Jonah’s preaching made much of a dent in the religion of Assyria. But that is not the point of the book of Jonah. The point is not that Ninevah began to worship Yahweh. Indeed, there is no reference to Yahweh in any of Jonah’s preaching or Ninevah’s response. After all, the book of Jonah was not written to Ninevah, but to Israel! For that matter, whether the Assyrians recognized the reference to Sodom and Gomorrah is quite immaterial! The point is that Israel would recognize it! Ninevah was the Sodom of the 8th century. It was the great city of wickedness. And the point of the book of Jonah is that when God sent the message of judgment to the Sodom of the 8th century, that city repented. Think of what Jesus said to Chorazin and Bethsaida: If the mighty deeds done in you had been done in Sodom, Sodom would have repented in dust and ashes. After all, that is what Ninevah did. Verse 5 has told us what they did in general – they called for a fast – but now verses 6-9 explain verse 5 in more detail. The King of Ninevah arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he issued a proclamation and published through Ninevah, By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish. God gave the king of Ninevah sufficient wisdom to understand that if God sends a messenger warning of judgment to come, then there is still hope. After all, if there was no hope, there would be no messenger! If there was no room for repentance, then there would be no reason to send a prophet. The proclamation of coming judgment is, by definition, a call to repentance, in order to escape the coming judgment. Too often Jonah is read as a rebuke against Israel’s hatred of the nations. But that is not the point. The book of Jonah is a rebuke of Israel’s failure to listen to the word of the LORD! When the king of Ninevah heard of the coming judgment of God, he responded by calling on the wicked and violent people of Ninevah to turn away from their evil and from their violence. The king of Ninevah decreed that the whole city should fast and pray and ask God for mercy. The only king in the history of the northern kingdom of Israel to have done this was Ahab, of all people (1 Kings 21:25-29). Ahab, whose repentance is qualified by the parenthetical comment that he was the worst king of Israel! But even in Ahab’s case, when Ahab repented, God showed him mercy, and did not bring the threatened judgment until after Ahab died. c. God Repents (3:10) This helps us to understand God’s repentance in verse 10. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it. God had said through Jonah Yet forty days, and Ninevah will be overturned. But now God decides not to bring disaster on the city. What does it mean that God “relented” (it is the same word, by the way, as the word “repent.”) Some translations don’t like admitting that God “repents,” so they use a different word that softens the blow. Some have used passages like this to claim that God does not truly know the future. They say that God was not certain whether Ninevah would repent or not. He threatened judgment, and then waited to see what Ninevah would do. Jeremiah 18:7-8 would seem to endorse this approach: If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster that I had planned. But to say that God repents (or changes his mind) about something is not the same as saying that I changed my mind – or repented about something. Consider the statement, “God is good.” Compare it with the statement, “Charles is good.” When we say that Charles is good and that God is good, we are not saying that Charles is as good as God. But neither are we saying that goodness is a meaningless term. Charles’s goodness is not identical to God’s goodness, but it is analogous. We know what goodness is because we know something of God’s character, and so when we recognize in others something that reminds us of God’s character, we call it “good.” Likewise, when God repents it is not the same – it is not identical – to our repentance. First of all, when we repent it is usually a matter of turning away from sin, and God never sins. But the basic idea of repentance (shub, in Hebrew) is turning. It means to turn from one path to another – from one direction to another. God’s repentance means that he has turned from one direction to another. His original trajectory was to destroy Ninevah, but because they have repented, now he will not destroy them. But the fact that God had declared that it was his purpose to destroy Ninevah is not the end of the story. After all, as we have seen before, the proclamation of coming judgment is issued for the very purpose of calling people to repentance. If God’s purpose were simply and solely to destroy Ninevah, then what would be the purpose of sending Jonah. (That, after all, is Jonah’s point in chapter 4! Jonah recognizes that his mission is to call Ninevah to repentance!) So any interpretation of Jonah that treats God’s “repentance” as an “oops! That wasn’t part of the plan!” is going contrary to the very statements of the book. 4. Do You Do Well to Be Angry? (4:1-11) a. Jonah Repents of His Repentance (4:1-4) But it displeased Jonah exceedingly… What is the “it”? “It” is Ninevah’s repentance, and God’s relenting from disaster. And Jonah became angry. And he prayed to the LORD and said O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Jonah quotes from Exodus 34:6-7, where God had revealed himself to Moses, and declared these things about himself. But his quotation is missing some things. He remembers what God has said about his merciful characteristics, but he neglects that God had also said that he would not let the guilty go unpunished. Jonah has forgotten that mercy and justice cannot be separated. But Jonah is perhaps the only preacher ever to be angry with God for bringing revival! He has just seen the repentance of the whole city, and he is furious! Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. I would rather be dead, than be known as the prophet who saved Ninevah! You and I can see very clearly that Jonah is shortsighted. He has already forgotten that God’s mercy and steadfast love are the reason why he is alive! But God wishes to teach Jonah (and us) about the relationship between mercy and justice. And so he asks Jonah, Do you do well to be angry? b. Jonah and the Plant (4:5-11) This sets up part two of the story: Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city. Jonah builds a booth in the desert to see what God will do with the city. Of course, nothing happens to the city. The real action is happening in Jonah’s little booth! Again, the real story is not Ninevah – but Jonah (who signifies Israel). Now the LORD God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. The booth would have provided some shelter, but this plant offers more significant shade. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, It is better for me to die than to live. But God said to Jonah, Do you do well to be angry for the plant? And he said, Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die! And the LORD said, You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle. This is a familiar sort of argument, a “how much more” sort of argument. Start with something small – if I should do something small, how much more should I do something big! Jesus will use this in the Sermon on the Mount: (Mt 7:11) “If you then, being evil, give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask.” Likewise, Paul often uses “how much more” sorts of arguments. God says, how can you be angry about losing a plant that grew up in one night and died the next? How much more should I be concerned about a great city that has been there for years? The phrase “do not know their right hand from their left” is idiomatic, meaning cannot distinguish between right and wrong. (cf 2 Samuel 19:35) It would appear to mean that Ninevah is filled with helpless people – not that they are morally neutral (God calls them wicked elsewhere in scripture), but that they have no way of escape. Should not God be concerned with these Ninevites who do not know the way of salvation? Conclusion Why does God have mercy on an undeserving city like Ninevah? They have cursed the children of Abraham, shouldn’t God curse them in response? Why yes, he should! But then again, if God is going to treat everyone as they deserve, then Israel as well would be cursed. Certainly, if God had treated Jonah the way he deserved, then he would have perished in the depths of the sea – in the belly of the fish. The book of Jonah ends with a question: what should God do about a foolish nation? What should God do about his foolish nation? What should God do about us? ?? ?? ?? ?? 1